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On Friday, a new non-profit news upstart called the Bay Area News Project was announced. Funded with seed money from F. Warren Hellman and bringing together the talent and resources of KQED-FM and U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, the non-profit news venture plans to bring "penetrating, dynamic coverage of news" to the Bay Area according to its own FAQ.

So, how are the existing news organizations in San Francisco taking the announcement? Not well, to judge from a memo sent out to the San Francisco Chronicle's Metro staff from Metro Editor Audrey Cooper posted on SFAppeal.com. Cooper rallies her staff to "smash whomever is naive enough to poke their noses in our market" and—head cheerleader-style—implores all adversaries to "Bring it on!" (This link comes via Jim Romenesko.)

It's probably worth noting that before he launched his Bay Area News Project, Hellman and a few other business leaders proposed that the Chronicle go non-profit. It's understandable that the paper might feel a little threatened.

Meanwhile, the East Bay Express's Robert Gammon looks at the project and wonders how its use of free J-school talent will impact professional news-gathering organizations. "The massive free-labor workforce will give the new venture a huge advantage over established Bay Area media organizations that depend on paid, veteran journalists to gather and put together news stories," Gammon writes. "The venture will be a boon to the students in the short-term because it will give them valuable experience, but if it also forces Bay Area news organizations to make further cuts to stay competitive, then the students will be unable to find journalism jobs once they graduate."

And what about those paid employees? Will they join the union? That's what Chris Rauber, of Portfolio.com brother-publication the San Francisco Business Times is wondering. He quotes Carl Hall, a Northern California Media Workers Guild rep who's been helping with the project, who says: "It’s up to the employees."